Details part of Obama reform speech tonight

President hopes to win support for health plan by providing specifics

By STEWART M. POWELL and JENNIFER A. DLOUHY Hearst Newspapers

Published 1:00 am, Wednesday, September 9, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Obama is using his speech to Congress tonight to appeal to multiple audiences in Congress and across the nation in an effort to galvanize support for the most sweeping overhaul of the nation's health care system since Lyndon Johnson masterminded enactment of Medicare in 1965.

Obama will use the much-anticipated address at 8 p.m. to spell out the specifics of his proposed health care plan, after months of generalizations designed to leave the details to Congress.

A key audience for his remarks to a joint session of Congress will be a handful of swing-vote senators such as Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson and Maine Republican Olympia Snowe, who may hold the key to any compromise health plan.

Obama also will be hoping to shore up support from liberal House Democrats, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who have insisted that health reform legislation provide a government-run plan to provide coverage for nearly 50 million uninsured.

Beyond his focus on lawmakers in Washington, Obama will be trying to reassure millions of people with employer-provided health insurance that their health plans wouldn't be affected by the changes under consideration.

Obama also will try to appeal to wary independent voters, who are nervous about any enlargement of government and bottomless federal deficits, as well as elderly people frightened by critics' claims that federally subsidized consultations with physicians over end-of-life issues constitute "death panels."

By delivering his address amid the hoopla of a rare joint session of the House and Senate rather than from the static environment of the Oval Office, Obama is banking that he can stir grassroots political pressure for congressional action on the cornerstone of his campaign agenda. He's looking to end a summer stalemate that saw lawmakers upbraided by angry critics at town hall meetings and his own popularity begin to ebb for the first time in his young presidency.

Four developments on the eve of Obama's address illustrated just how volatile negotiations have become:

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, huddled with five swing-vote senators to seek a possible compromise on a plan that would require that all Americans get health insurance. Penalties for failing to do so would start at $750 a year for individuals and $1,500 for families.

Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., a leader of moderate House Democrats, abandoned earlier support for proposed government-run coverage in a symbolic setback for the approach he had supported.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the House majority leader, told reporters that government-run insurance coverage was not essential for him to support a final compromise.

Pelosi, the House speaker, emerged from consultations at the White House to announce that so-called "public option" insurance coverage would be included in any legislation approved by the House.

Obama had initially left it to Congress to draft proposals for the overhaul rather than repeating the mistake of 1993 when President Bill Clinton and then-first lady Hillary Clinton imperiously delivered a detailed White House blueprint to Capitol Hill with scant congressional input.

Their plan never came to a vote in either the House or Senate.

But now Obama sounds impatient. "There comes a time to decide, a time to act," Obama told a labor union audience in Cincinnati on Monday. "And Ohio — that time is now!"

Obama is not expected to echo the peppery, in-your-face rhetoric that he used in his Labor Day, campaign-style speech in Cincinnati — particularly after seeing so many lawmakers maneuvering for position on the eve of his address.